


Four Hours

by deancasplatonicmyass



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cas does some dream-walking, Dean's nightmares, Destiel - Freeform, Dreams, Implied soul bond, M/M, i don't even know man, watch out for my crazy-ass metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 20:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1199295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deancasplatonicmyass/pseuds/deancasplatonicmyass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the first few moments of consciousness, when his lids fluttered and his face was slack and unguarded, Dean's dreams were laid plain on his features. And those moments were when Castiel would appear with a soft rustling of wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Hours

**Author's Note:**

> My second fic, radically different from my first. I got the idea for this one while lying awake at three AM, as most delusional fools do. It's heavy with angsty metaphors and implied Destiel shenanigans so it's Rated T. Just to be safe.  
> Should I continue this? What can I do to improve it? Tell me in the comments. I need all the help I can get at this point.  
> Thanks for reading my shit!  
> Love, Molly Pond (kissmecastiel)
> 
> UPDATE: I fixed the ending. Hopefully I didn't make it worse.

            Four hours.

            That’s all Dean needed; four hours every few days was enough to keep him functioning, or so he claimed. He could have done with more; the persistent ache behind his eyes told him as much.

            Dean was most vulnerable when he slept; when he tucked his knife under the pillow and closed his eyes. Without classic rock pumping into his ears or the thrill of the hunt to occupy his mind, everything he repressed during the day flooded to the surface. He was no stranger to nightmares; countless times he had woken in the dark with a racing heart, tangled motel sheets pasted to his limbs with cold sweat. He would glance over at his brother’s gargantuan form sprawled out on the other bed, snoring lightly and dead to the world. He was occasionally grateful for Sam’s capability to sleep through anything; it meant that Dean’s thrashing and breaths would go unwitnessed.

            Dean’s dreams were his own domain, his private battlefield; the area of his life that even Sam could not touch. Their contents were rarely shared. He had dreams before that had made him feel exposed and vulnerable in an empty room, dreams that stemmed from long-buried impulses, hidden desires that silently cut through his sleep like a white-hot wire. Dreams that, upon waking, made him want to hide his face lest his thoughts were written on his skin, or sloshing in his eyes, waiting to spill over the brim of his eyelashes and trail treasonously down his face for all to read.

            He had learned to harden his features, to freeze the tenderness and insecurity or shame before it had the chance to leak out. He was usually able to put up a solid front before Sam or anyone else got a good look at him.

            But in the first few moments of consciousness, when his lids fluttered and his face was slack and unguarded, his dreams were laid plain on his features. And those moments were when Castiel would appear with a soft rustling of wings.

            Dean would be on his back, floating in a dark pool of sleep, when he felt the slightest brush of something alive and awake; like the fin of a shark sliding through murky ocean water. The sensation would startle him, and a jolt of electricity would course through him, permeating him so completely that would wrapped its tendrils around the sinews of his muscles. He would flail his limbs in the dark, struggling to keep afloat, and then he was awake with a gasp and the waters receded and Castiel was sitting on the opposite side of the bed, looking down at him.

            “Hello, Dean,” He said, glancing over his shoulder. “What were you dreaming about?”

            Dean had been dreaming of Hell, the one he had spent four months in before being hauled out by a celestial wavelength. What no one knew, however, was that Dean had dreamt of hell long before the fires touched him. Because hell was more than just a yawning pit. Hell was a house ablaze, with his mother inside. Hell was Sam lying dead in Bobby’s house; Dean knowing that he needed to lay his brother to rest but not being ready to dig the grave. Hell was the stains on the motel room carpets, the lumps in the mattresses. Hell was waking up in the morning with a stiff neck and a blade beneath his pillow, knowing that there were things in the world that needed to be killed. Hell was never having done enough.

            Cas didn’t need to ask what went on in Dean’s head while he slept; he knew. He had tasted Dean’s dreams, walked among them. And when he stood before Dean’s slumbering figure, he read the lines in the hunter’s face. He could sense the pain, the panic as demons poked at Dean’s subconscious. Even when he was far away, he could reach out and feel Dean’s dreams; watch them unfold like a film spiraling off the reel. Through Dean’s dreams, Cas experienced everything Dean had repressed in his waking hours. The levee had broken and torrents of emotions spilled out.

            The aches and the anger were expected; the misery and raw fear were natural. But there was something else as well, something that caught the angel by surprise. When he first felt it, ringing out like a church bell, he immediately flew to Dean’s side. The hunter had fallen asleep at a chipped linoleum table in dingy motel room, face smashed against a messy stack of articles printed from the internet. His back rose and fell with his steady breaths. Castiel felt the naked longing radiating from Dean’s soul, seeping through the dreams.

            That was the night that Dean’s dreams began to change.

            The images drifting through his head at night had become more vivid, the pain and terror more intense. The dreams hummed through his body, like the singing vibrations of a tuning fork. Every night they sang of blood, inky red puddles of it on cracked concrete. A wide red stain blooming on the back of his brother’s jacket; rusty threads curving along his own lip and down his chin. The dreams pressed down on him like a moulding shroud, dank and heavy and sick.

            And then the weight was lifted and the air that hit him was cool and sweet and there were blue eyes and the soft rustling of wings and the tender press of lips on his forehead and Dean knew somewhere in his mind that he wouldn’t, _shouldn’t_ remember this when he awoke. He would choose to ignore it, choose to forget. When the morning light flickered in his eyes he would find himself in bed alone, as always.

            But the morning was miles away and Castiel was here, filling Dean’s slumber with warm words and cool touches. The angel’s gravelly voice was murmuring in a language the sleeping hunter would never understand, but the strange syllables filled him with a sense of peace and a quiet, flickering thrill low in his belly.

            Sometimes that was all; but occasionally the dreams became more heated. Dean would feel a sudden, tender nip of teeth on his earlobe and his breath would catch. There were long fingers carding his hair and sweet breaths on his neck. Then a hand would fit into the red mark on his left shoulder and Dean felt as though he himself were molten silver being poured into a crucible, aglow with cleansing heat.

            Dean was never sure; in the haze of slumber he could swear that the Castiel kissing the freckles under his eyes was the Angel himself, entering Dean’s dreams like he had done when they needed to speak privately. But when Dean woke the dreams seemed as faded and flat as the roses printed on the motel’s wallpaper. He was still alone in his bed, with his joints aching in the same places and the same dead taste in his mouth. He crawled out of bed and stuffed his knife into his belt and kept driving down a long road that seemed to never end. Nothing ever seemed to change.

            Only now, four hours of sleep just wasn’t enough.


End file.
